Talk about getting hit to the head. Check this slo-mo video of a moderately hard hit to the head and then decide if you want this done a multiple times (never mind countless times in your fighting career) to your head - http://youtu.be/zYKpQuq4hsE. I think the issues really start surfacing when you're old and decrepit as we're starting to see with retired American football players - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/sports...&ref=health

Talk about getting hit to the head. Check this slo-mo video of a moderately hard hit to the head and then decide if you want this done a multiple times (never mind countless times in your fighting career) to your head - http://youtu.be/zYKpQuq4hsE. I think the issues really start surfacing when you're old and decrepit as we're starting to see with retired American football players

That's my point.It has to take a toll somewhere down the road.But the sport hasn't been around long enough in order to determine that yet.Even my (former) karate instructors are all banged up from years of hard training.Knees, hips, backs, shoulders, neck. You name it.

Amazing how many MMA schools have gone out of business since the debates started.

What it looks like it came down to was business model. I don't question the value, just the longer MMA was around the more stuff it had to cut/stop doing in order to keep customers.

Like Coleman pointed out.

A number of TM school had to do the same thing to keep their doors open.

Paraphrasing someone here:

"back in the day we had small classes of serious people--then we expanded and we had to water down we taught in order to keep the doors open--and pay for the small group of dedicated people. Could have just focused on the small group of dedicated people to start with."

_________________________
I did battle with ignorance today.......and ignorance won.
Huey.

I don't agree with this, but personally I think MMA sparring is the best sort of sparring a person can do if they want to prepare for physical confrontation outside of class.

That is just your opinion. There are many ways in which that type of sparring would be detrimental in preparing you for a physical confrontation outside of class. It is designed for sporting competitions and not for self defence and if someone was going to use it for that purpose then they had better know how to adapt their mindset.

Originally Posted By: Prizewriter

As for MMA taking students from TMA classes, I think that a lot of TMA schools only have themselves to blame. For too long many TMA schools have been selling themselves as places where they can make a person in to a fighting machine.

For some of the bad schools this may be true. On the other side of the coin many people seem to think that with a few months MMA training that they can beat any TMA master with decades of experience easily in a few seconds just because they saw a TMA fighter lose one or two fights in the Octagon.

Originally Posted By: Prizewriter

In the advent of MMA and the UFC, the public are a LOT more discerning about the hyperbole and marketing that many TMA schools use.

True but people also seem to believe every thing they see on YouTube about MMA versus (insert art here)somehow 'proving' that TMA's are somehow ineffective/useless.

Like anything else, there is truth to be found on either side of the argument here! One thing MMA does well, is that the training prepares an individual to handle pressure in way not often seen within many TMA schools. This isn't to say that TMA guys don't see or can't handle pressure however (trying not to make a blanket statement here).

What if/wouldn't it be great if, we could train MMA for the street? Wouldn't we have something interesting then? Well, we can, have, and do.

At the end of the day, it's ALL TMA to begin with. The only difference is how it's trained.